Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Cinema Clips: The Final Girls

Max (Taissa Farmiga) loses her mom (Malin Akerman) in a car accident. Her mom, Nancy, was a struggling horror film actress best known for a Friday the 13th-type, summer camp slasher movie made in the eighties. After agreeing to show up for a screening of her late mom’s film, Max and her friends journey inside the movie, where Max winds up hanging out with her mom, who isn’t really her mom and is actually Amanda, the character she played in the film. The movie is crazy enough to work on a few levels, although it suffers a bit because the movie is rated PG-13, strange for a movie spoofing films that have hard-R ratings. There are some good laughs due mainly to a strong supporting cast with comedy chops, including Thomas Middleditch (“Silicon Valley”), Adam Devine (“Workaholics”) and Alexander Ludwig (“Grown Ups 2”…okay, Alexander doesn’t provide a lot of laughs). Dan B. Morris provides a nice bit of authenticity playing Billy, a slasher villain modeled after Jason from the “Friday the 13th” movies. Norris has the moves down well, and deserves to be in the running for the sure-to-happen someday “Friday the 13th” reboot. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson has made a fun film, but it could’ve been batter had it added some more horror elements like over-the-top gore. It feels like the movie chickened out a bit.